A motor vehicle may be viewed as a distributed network with multiple communication nodes spread throughout the network defined by one or more of: the semiconductors or other hardware (MCU/MPU/SoC or ECU) used, the hardware interconnect, and finally the hardware purpose or function. Each node has one or more granularly defined function(s). The standard communication protocols utilized in the majority of modern vehicle makes and models were defined years ago and therefore are limited in network bandwidth, with 8 byte, 4 byte and 2 byte message size limitations of those networks being a common configuration. Some of the more common automotive network protocols are, for instance, controller area network (CAN) and local interconnect network (LIN). Newer standards have been defined (e.g., CAN FD); however generally those new network standards have yet to be widely adopted by the automotive industry due to cost and other engineering constraints.
As automobiles and other motor vehicles are increasingly connected, e.g., to the internet via 3G or 4G connections, and gain broadband Ethernet access, hackers are able to exploit new attack surface(s). Hackers have recently been successful at hacking and gaining control of vehicles such as the widely publicized (July 2015) hack of a Jeep® Grand Cherokee®, which was illicitly remotely controlled and driven off the road by two hackers, from the comfort of their home miles away, wielding nothing except a laptop and an internet connection.
It would be desirable to provide a more effective method of creating, e.g., CAN bus (or LIN bus) digital privacy management. Most experts, however, expect that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve a secure CAN bus.